How to clean silver plate without wearing through it
Wash it, dry it, and polish only as much as the tarnish bothers you. Here is how we care for plate, what we leave dark on purpose, and when the foil and baking soda trick is safe.
Wash silver plate by hand in warm water with a little dish soap, dry it at once, and polish it with a cream polish and a soft cloth only when the tarnish bothers you. Every polish takes off a little silver, and on plate there is not much silver to take.
Every piece of plate in our shop is cleaned and cared for before it is listed, and this is the method we would give a friend. It also covers where the popular shortcuts go wrong.
Why plate wears through
Silver plate is a coat of silver over copper, brass or nickel silver. The plating specification that platers use today, ASTM B700, gives 0.00078 inch as the reference thickness for good-quality household hollowware. That is less than a thousandth of an inch, and on older pieces it varies.
Polish is a very fine abrasive, and tarnish is silver that has combined with sulfur from the air. So each time you polish, you remove the tarnish and a little of the silver under it. The coat goes first where your cloth presses hardest: rims, handles, feet and the high points of raised decoration. When it is gone, the metal underneath shows through as a pink or brown patch for copper, or a yellow one for brass.
That is why the rest of this post is about doing as little as you can, as gently as you can.
Wash before you polish
Most of what looks like tarnish on a piece from an estate sale is dust, kitchen grease and old polish. Wash it first and you may not need to polish at all.
- Fill a plastic tub with warm water and a few drops of mild dish soap. A plastic tub keeps the piece off a hard sink.
- Wash with a soft cloth or a soft brush. A soft toothbrush gets into pierced rims and engraving.
- Rinse in clean warm water.
- Dry right away with a soft towel. Water left to dry leaves spots.
Keep plate out of the dishwasher. The heat and the detergent dull the finish, and contact with stainless steel in the rack can leave dark spots.
What we leave dark on purpose
Not every dark area is a problem. On engraved and chased silver, the dark tarnish that sits in the cut lines is what makes the pattern visible from across the room. Polish it all out and the engraving goes flat and pale.
Our hand-engraved silver-plated coffee pot shows it well. Its rosettes, scrolling leaves and stippled panels read clearly because the lines stay darker than the surface around them.
Sometimes we leave a whole piece unpolished. Our three sterling swans with crystal bodies have a deep natural patina that brings out every feather in the pierced wings. We chose to keep it, and we will polish them before they ship if their new owner wants them bright.
How to polish plate
You need:
- A cream or paste polish made for silver
- Soft cotton cloths, such as old T-shirts or flannel
- Cotton swabs for engraving and corners
- Cotton or nitrile gloves, because the salt and oil on fingers leaves prints that tarnish
Caution: do not use toothpaste or a baking soda paste on plate. Both are more abrasive than silver polish and will scratch the surface and thin the coat faster.
Polish only where it needs it, and go easy on the edges.
- Try the polish first on the underside or another place nobody sees.
- Put a small amount on the cloth, not on the piece.
- Rub with light pressure. Let the polish do the work and change to a clean part of the cloth when it turns black.
- Do the high points and the edges last, with the least pressure. Those are where the coat is thinnest.
- Wash off the polish in warm soapy water, rinse, and dry well. Polish left in engraving dries white.
The foil and baking soda method
Our position: it works, it is the right choice for some plate, and it is the wrong choice for a lot of it.
It works because of chemistry, not scrubbing. When tarnished silver touches aluminum in hot water with baking soda, the aluminum takes the sulfur and the tarnish turns back into silver. Nothing is rubbed off. That makes it gentler on thin plate than a hard polish.
The catch is that it treats the whole piece at once. It turns back the tarnish in the engraving and the recesses along with the tarnish on the flat surfaces, so a chased or engraved piece comes out evenly pale. The Canadian Conservation Institute also notes that the silver it returns sits on the surface as fine particles, which leaves a dull, matte finish. A quick buff with a polishing cloth brings the shine back.
Caution: do not put these in the bath. Use this method only on plate that is one piece of solid metal.
- Pieces with hollow parts, such as hollow handles, feet or finials. Water gets inside and cannot get out.
- Weighted pieces, such as many candlesticks and some bowls. The base is filled with pitch or plaster, and hot water can soften the pitch and soak the plaster.
- Anything glued: glass liners set in cement, felt bases, stones, and decorative mounts.
- Handles of wood, bone, ivory or mother-of-pearl.
- Mechanical pieces with springs, hinges or linings, such as a Victorian jewelry castor.
- Engraved or chased pieces where you want to keep the dark in the lines.
Our Wilcox Victorian jewelry castor is the kind of piece that never goes near a bath. It has two hand-painted opaline perfume bottles, velvet-lined jewelry compartments hidden in the stand, and a mechanism. A piece like this gets a soft cloth and a cotton swab, one area at a time.
For plain plate, such as a stack of tarnished spoons or a smooth tray:
- Line a plastic tub or a glass dish with aluminum foil.
- Add baking soda and a sprinkle of salt: about a teaspoon of soda for a small bowl, more for a tub.
Caution: the water is very hot. Use tongs and open a window, because the reaction gives off a smell of rotten eggs.
- Pour in very hot water until the pieces will be covered.
- Put the pieces in so that each one touches the foil. Leave them for a few minutes and turn them once.
- Lift them out with tongs, rinse in clean water, and dry right away.
- Buff with a soft cloth or a silver polishing cloth.
When the base metal already shows
No cleaning method puts silver back. If copper or brass shows on the high points, stop polishing those areas and wash the piece instead. A plating shop can replate it, which gives an even new finish but removes the look of age that collectors of vintage plate value.
Keeping it bright
Clean plate stays bright longer away from air. Store it wrapped in a soft cloth or a silver storage bag, and keep it away from rubber and from foods with sulfur, such as eggs. Use it often. A tray that goes out for coffee every Sunday gets a wipe and a wash every Sunday, and it rarely needs a polish.
The Wm Rogers tray at the top of this post has a pierced gallery rim and an etched floral center, and the rest of our plate is in the silver and metalware collection.
